Bury Me Deep
by ariel2me
Summary: For the prompt: Steffon Baratheon telling Robert and Stannis about his father's death. (Contains spoilers from The World of Ice and Fire)


**A/N: This fic contains spoilers for The World of Ice and Fire. **

Prince Rhaegar was all gracious smiles and humble words after he unhorsed Steffon Baratheon in the tilt. "I am grateful for your consideration towards a green knight still uncertain of his footing, Cousin Steffon," he said, when he entered the Baratheon's tent while Stannis and Robert were still endeavoring to remove their father's armor and visor.

"You earned your victory entirely of your own accord, Your Grace," Steffon replied, with polite courtesy but no real warmth. Strange, he thought, how little he knew this young prince, the eldest son of the cousin with whom he had been inseparable in their younger days. Steffon and Aerys had served together in King's Landing first as royal pages and then as squires, had shared beds, meals and drinks on too many occasions to count, had even fought and bled together in war. Yet their sons were little more than strangers.

"I will avenge your defeat, Father," Robert solemnly declared, after Rhaegar and his retinue had left the tent. "I will unhorse him like he unhorsed you."

Steffon laughed. "There is nothing to avenge, Robert. The victory is his because Prince Rhaegar is the better fighter of the day."

"Even so –" Robert persisted.

"You are not drawn to meet Prince Rhaegar in any of the rounds. There is still the melee, of course, but the prince will not be participating in that," Stannis said, throwing cold water on Robert's eagerness without even looking up, his eyes intent on checking his father's armor for marks and scratches, his mind already preoccupied with the multitude of tasks ahead.

Irked, Robert retaliated with, "You should have entered the list. A tourney at Storm's End should have _all_ the Baratheon sons participating."

Steffon quickly intervened, before an argument could break out between the two brothers. "I need Stannis to squire for me," he said firmly. "Besides, this is _your_ first tourney, Robert. Stannis will have the chance to prove himself later."

Robert looked pleased, hearing that. Stannis had already started polishing Steffon's armor, his face hidden from his father's gaze.

In truth, Steffon was motivated by the wish to evade the spectacle of Stannis being overshadowed by his older brother yet again, as much as he was driven by the desire to give Robert his moment in the sun, without his younger brother always following in tow. The cheers had been deafening whenever Robert appeared in the tourney ground. There had even been whispers and chatters about the Laughing Storm reborn, in the form of Lord Steffon's eldest son and heir.

_When the sun shines so brightly, all other lights pale in comparison, struggling to be noticed, to be given its due. _Steffon's father Lord Ormund had been thinking of his own father when he spoke those words – the famous, or some said, _infamous_, Lyonel Baratheon, known throughout the Seven Kingdoms as the Laughing Storm. But Steffon was beginning to suspect that the sentiment would apply just as aptly to his two sons.

"I was not the kind of son my father wished for," Ormund Baratheon had confided to his son, on their way to the Stepstones to meet the forces of the Ninepenny Kings, on their way to the battle that would end his life.

"Not as bold, or as proud, or as defiant as the Laughing Storm," Ormund continued. "I counseled patience when Prince Duncan broke the betrothal with my sister. I pleaded with my father to reconsider his decision to call the banners and declare himself the Storm King. He did not say the words out loud, but I knew … I _knew _from the look on his face that he thought me a coward, a craven, a son who could never make him proud."

"You fought by his side when he met the Targaryen host," Steffon protested. "There is nothing craven or cowardly about that."

"I did my duty, yes. But if my father had a son he could truly put his faith in, he would not have chosen to face single combat himself. My father was no longer a young man by that time; his prowess in battle was not what it had been in his prime. A more worthy son of the Laughing Storm would have fought, and defeated, Ser Duncan the Tall."

His father's voice, drenched as it was with shame and regret, almost undone Steffon. He said the first thing that came to mind. "If that had been so, you would not have married Mother, and I would not have been born. Would you wish for that, Father?"

_Never_, Ormund Baratheon insisted.

"Did my lord grandfather win many tourneys in his days?" Robert asked, startling Steffon from his contemplation of the past.

"No," Steffon replied, "my father was not often in the lists."

"Why not? Grandfather's own father was famed for his numerous tourney exploits and victories," Robert pointed out, sounding and looking genuinely puzzled.

"Perhaps that was the reason," Stannis said, breaking his silence. Steffon's eyes searched his younger son's face, but the expression he found there was unreadable.

"The shadow is not always kind to those living under it," Steffon said. Stannis kept his head down, his hands furiously polishing his father's sword with blunt, almost brutal strokes.

Robert looked even more puzzled. Finally, his expression clearing, he said, "Still, Grandfather was a brave and gallant warrior in his own right. He died in battle commanding the army of King Jaehaerys against the traitorous Ninepenny Kings after all."

Raising his head, Stannis said, "He was doing his duty to his king, and to the realm."

"You and your duty," Robert muttered under his breath.

"Well, what of it?" Stannis challenged his brother.

They exchanged words back-and-forth, his two sons, but Steffon heard none of it. He was _furious_ suddenly, incensed at how blithely and easily Robert often spoke about glory and valor, and how relentlessly and persistently Stannis would often speak about duty and obligation. What did they really know, his sons, about valor, about glory, about duty, about obligation? About loss? About life? About death? These two boys whose father and mother still lived.

His sons had not yet had to set foot on an actual battleground, had never seen countless men die screaming as their guts spilled out and their blood stained the ground crimson. Steffon thanked the gods every day for that blessing, but there was a part of him that desperately wanted to shake this complacency out of them; that thought it his responsibility, in fact, as their father, to force their eyes open to the cruelty – nay, worse, the _indifference_– of the world, where a son could only watch, helpless and powerless to do anything, as the light went out of his father's eyes, as the living turned into the dead in the space between one blink of the eye to the next.

_We have seen men die before, Father_, they would tell him. Murderers hanged or beheaded, bodies of smallfolk butchered by roving bands of lawless criminals - Steffon had not spared his sons all that. Robert would be Lord of Storm's End one day, and Stannis his castellan, Steffon hoped. They must understand that it was the duty of a lord to protect his people, to deliver justice.

But there was a difference, there was a great difference between seeing -

"Grandfather was not afraid to die," Robert's voice broke through, in the middle of his argument with Stannis.

"Of course he was afraid," Steffon snapped. "Only a fool is never afraid, and my father was _not_ a fool."

"Were you with him, when your father died?" Stannis asked, finally putting the sword and the armor aside, eyes intent only on his father's face.

"Of course he was," Robert replied irritably. "Father went to the Stepstones to fight the war, just like Grandfather did. Father was in King Aerys' retinue, except the king was only a prince then."

"Were you _with him_, by his side, when he died?" Stannis clarified. "Like the son of Orys Baratheon was by his side, when Lord Orys died on their way back from Dorne."

_There are stories you tell, and others you keep to yourself._ Because to tell it would mean reliving it, every cursed moment, every shard of pain., every sliver of agony.

But perhaps he had kept too much to himself, for far too long.

And he relived it most nights in his dreams in any case, even if the words were never spoken aloud, and the story was never actually told.

"My father did not die in a tent with a smile on his lips, surrounded by the rotting hands and the rotting feet of his enemy," Steffon began.

"He died in battle," Robert said, with awe, as if those four words explained everything, as if nothing more needed to be said.

"Do you really understand what that means, to die in battle?" challenged Steffon.

"Argilac Durrandon died in battle, with a sword in his hand and a curse on his lips," Robert replied.

How glorious and uplifting they made death seem, these singers and storytellers, even the septons and maesters writing accounts of past battles in their serious tomes. How unlike the truth it all was.

"Maelys the Monstrous himself cut down my lord father," Steffon continued. Ormund Baratheon had fallen off his horse in the confusion of the battle, and instead of getting down from _his_ horse to meet Ormund on equal ground – the way Orys Baratheon did when he was battling the last Storm King – Maelys had continued to hack and slash away with his sword from atop his horse. Ormund was on his knees by the time Steffon got to his side.

"He died in my arms," Steffon continued, repeating the words that he had said only once before - to his mother, when he returned from the Stepstones with her husband's body.

But what did it _really_ mean, to say that his father '_died in his arms'_? So much remained unsaid, unexplained, unresolved, with those words. He could describe each wound, each injury, each hack of the sword with detailed precision - for he remembered them all, still - but that left out so much more.

The look of disbelief on his father's face.

The weight of his father's head cradled in his arm.

The lips that tried to form words but failed.

The hand that tried to –

_No_, Steffon decided.

There are stories you do not tell because the words are never right, never adequate.

And then there are stories you choose not to tell because it is too cruel to the ones you love.

This is what he told his sons – _my father died in my arms, and gods be good you will not suffer the same fate._

The rest, he kept to himself.


End file.
